[November
2004] -- If this album can be used as evidence, family holidays
must have been a blast at the Mangione home in Rochester, NY.
Clearly, multi-talented Gap Mangione and his paisanos are having
a lot of fun on this engaging album while making beautiful music
that embraces not only the Christmas holiday season but several
others as well, including a few whose meaning may be clear only
to Gap, his friends and family. Among the latter is Leroy Anderson's
enchanting “Serenata,” which is a pleasure to hear
on any occasion, especially when it houses awesome solos by Gap
on piano, trumpeter Jeff Jarvis and the torrid tenor tandem of
Andy Weinzler and Pat LaBarbera. Seven of the album's fifteen
selections are directly tied to Christmas, a couple to the New
Year holiday, another to Gap's wedding anniversary, “Cinco
de Mayo” (May 5, 1985). The others are less explicit, encompassing,
besides “Serenata,” a well-known hymn (”Amazing
Grace”), Gap's “Bellezza,” his arrangement of
“Tarantellas,” and brother Chuck Mangione's “Sweet
Cheryl Lynn,” a showcase for soprano saxophonist and longtime
collaborator Gerry Niewood. Vocalist Cindy Miller is featured
on "The Way We Celebrate New Year's,” Gap, Niewood
(alto) and trumpeter Jack Schantz on Rob McConnell's driving arrangement
of Frank Loesser's “What Are You Doing New Year's Eve.”
Anderson's evocative “Sleigh Ride,” incorporating
snappy solos by Weinzler, Jarvis and trombonist John Hasselback,
is a highlight, as are the buoyant “Cinco de Mayo”
(Weinzler, tenor; Grant Geissman, guitar), LaBarbera's and Schantz's
fluent statements on Sammy Cahn/Jule Styne's handsome “Christmas
Waltz,” the captivating Sicilian “Tarantellas,”
and Weinzler's soulful arrangement of “Silent Night,”
on which his expressive tenor is once again front and center.
Gap's two “duets” with Geissman (”Santa Claus
Is Coming to Town,” “Carol of the Bells”), which
use overdubbing to produce a number of off-center effects, are
slightly less successful, although the latter is polished and
lyrical. Mangione leads a first-class ensemble, and the music
it plays is by and large exemplary, making Family Holidays a charming
seasonal gift that almost anyone should be pleased to unwrap.
~
Jack Bowers http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/contrib.php?id=102
